Geek Guy

Category: Global IT News

Shein app returns to India via Reliance deal

Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein has relaunched in India through a partnership with Reliance Retail, nearly five years after it was banned amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. The new Shein India Fast Fashion app, developed and launched by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, marks the firm’s significant return to one of Asia’s largest…

Adobe exec Scott Belsky departs for indie movie studio A24

Adobe’s chief strategy officer Scott Belsky announced this week that he will be joining A24, the independent movie studio behind “Civil War,” “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” and many more titles. Belsky first joined Adobe in 2012 through the acquisition of Behance, leaving briefly in 2016 to become a VC at Benchmark but eventually returning…

Venture debt lenders will play a big role in fire sales and startup shutdown this year, experts say

When accounting startup Bench abruptly failed last month, the shutdown was forced when the company’s lenders called in the startup’s loan. In late 2023, the digital freight company Convoy faced financial challenges, leading venture lending firm Hercules Capital to assume control of the company to recover its investments. Divvy Homes, which sold for about $1…

Here are the apps battling to be become the ‘TikTok for Bluesky’

TikTok’s potential U.S. ban has sparked a flurry of development within the open social web community. Several new applications are being built that could one day serve as a TikTok replacement for those who favor the open source, decentralized social network Bluesky and the technology that powers it, the AT Protocol. Though the TikTok ban…

How to delete X and move on with your life

As Elon Musk’s X sees a decline in daily active users, some people are deciding to ditch the social network entirely, whether that’s for Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, or perhaps, better yet, nothing at all. Since the Tesla and SpaceX CEO bought Twitter in 2022, numerous alternatives have cropped up, seeking to ensnare people who are…

AI agents could birth the first one-person unicorn — but at what societal cost?

Thanks to the advent of cloud computing and distributed digital infrastructure, the one-person micro-enterprise is far from a novel concept. Cheap on-demand compute, remote collaboration, payment processing APIs, social media, and e-commerce marketplaces have all made it easier to “go it alone” as an entrepreneur. But what about scaling that one-person business into something meatier…

Sam Altman believes OpenAI has been on the ‘wrong side of history’ concerning open source

To cap off a day of product releases, OpenAI researchers, engineers, and executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, answered questions in a wide-ranging Reddit AMA on Friday. OpenAI the company finds itself in a bit of a precarious position. It’s battling the perception that it’s ceding ground in the AI race to Chinese companies like…

MLCommons and Hugging Face team up to release massive speech data set for AI research

MLCommons, a nonprofit AI safety working group, has teamed up with AI dev platform Hugging Face to release one of the world’s largest collections of public domain voice recordings for AI research. The data set, called Unsupervised People’s Speech, contains more than a million hours of audio spanning at least 89 different languages. MLCommons says…

Elon Musk is reportedly taking control of the inner workings of US government agencies

People working for, or with, Elon Musk are reportedly taking over the inner workings of multiple government agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management and the Treasury Department. The Washington Post reported Friday that the highest-ranking career official at Treasury is leaving the department after “a clash” with people working for Musk’s so-called Department of…

Guo’s Conviction Partners adds Mike Vernal as GP, raises $230M fund

When in mid-2022 Sarah Guo left Greylock to launch her own AI-focused fund, Conviction Partners, she indicated that she was tagging the word “Partners” to the firm’s name because she would eventually bring on other GPs. Now, more than two years later, Guo is being joined by Mike Vernal, who was a partner at Sequoia…

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is trying to duck a deposition in an OpenAI copyright lawsuit

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is trying to avoid being deposed in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, according to new court filings. In response, lawyers for the plaintiff — the Authors Guild — have filed a motion to compel testimony from Amodei and his Anthropic co-founder, Benjamin Mann. Authors Guild’s lawyers claim that Amodei and Mann,…

CFPB fines fintech Wise, alleging it charged deceptive fees

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has hit UK-based remittance company Wise with about a $2 million fine for what it described as “a series of illegal actions.” Those actions include advertising inaccurate fees and failing to properly disclose exchange rates and other costs, the CFPB alleges. Specifically, the agency claims that the fintech company…

Apple will pay $20M to settle Watch battery swelling suit, ‘denies wrongdoing’

Apple has agreed to pay $20 million to resolve a class-action lawsuit over battery swelling on the Apple Watch. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2019, the suit alleges that the problem affected the first four Apple Watch models. Battery swelling is pretty much what it sounds like:…

Meta turns to solar — again — in its data center-building boom

The announcement comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg maintains the company’s ambitious AI strategy, which will require hefty capital investments in data centers. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

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Stablecoins are finding product market fit in emerging markets

Five years ago, SpaceX launched Starlink, which has since grown into its biggest revenue driver, expanding to over 100 countries. But as Starlink scaled, it faced a major hurdle: accepting payments in developing markets, where traditional banking infrastructure is unreliable, slow, and prone to blocking transactions. Many local banks across Africa, Latin America and Asia…

This investor wants you to sign an NDA to build Legos together

Investor, former GitHub CEO, and all around Tech Guy™ Nat Friedman has posted a strangely enticing offer on X. His post reads, “Need volunteers to come to my office in Palo Alto today to construct a 5000 piece Lego set. Will provide pizza. Have to sign NDA. Please DM.” Thanks to the investigative reporting of…

Microsoft is forming a new unit to study AI’s impacts

Microsoft says that it’s creating a new unit, the Advanced Planning Unit (APU), within its Microsoft AI business division that will help the company understand the societal, health, and work implications of AI the company hopes to build. Microsoft AI, which encompasses Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, and Edge products, is becoming core to Microsoft’s growth strategy…

DeepSeek: Everything you need to know about the AI chatbot app

DeepSeek has gone viral. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts (and Google Play, as well). DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts — and technologists — to question whether the U.S. can maintain its…

Custom feed builder Graze is building a business on Bluesky, and investors are paying attention

A startup called Graze, which lets you build your own feeds for the Bluesky social network, has caught investors’ attention. In addition to offering tools to easily build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds, Graze will soon allow feed creators to monetize their efforts with advertising, sponsored posts, and subscriptions. In other words, Graze has…

AI startup Perplexity sued for alleged trademark infringement

Perplexity, the venture-backed startup building AI-powered search products, has been sued in federal court for allegedly violating another company’s trademark. In a complaint filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, attorneys representing a company called Perplexity Solved Solutions accuse Perplexity of infringing on its trademark rights by using the…

Backed by Mayo Clinic, Nutrix’s hardware monitors worker stress

Stress isn’t just bad for you — it’s also bad for your employer. Factoring in absenteeism, diminished productivity, turnover, medical costs, and accidents, the non-profit American Institute of Stress estimates that workplace stress costs U.S. businesses over $300 billion annually. One way to measure stress is by monitoring cortisol levels. Even influencers know this, with…

Big Early Moves In 2024 A/NZ Channel Consolidation

Major consolidation moves are already shaping the Australian and New Zealand channel landscape in early 2025, with multiple acquisition talks and competing takeover bids highlighting the sector’s dynamic nature. AUCyber pursuit heats up, then cools as Brennan IT withdraws The first big acquisition tussle is centered around ASX-listed cyber security company AUCyber. Melbourne-based digital services…

TechCrunch Disrupt 2025: Last 24 hours for 2-for-1 Pass

Final hours for 2-for-1 Passes! One of the best Super Early Bird Deals for TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 will be wrapping up in just 24 hours for the rest of the year. The 2-for-1 Pass lets you bring a friend, colleague, or business partner, for nearly free. Buy one pass at the Super Early Bird rate…

US nonprofit healthcare provider says hackers stole medical and personal data of 1M+ patients

Community Health Center (CHC), a Connecticut-based nonprofit healthcare provider, has confirmed that hackers accessed the sensitive data of more than a million patients. In a filing with Maine’s attorney general on Thursday, CHC said it detected suspicious activity on its network on 2 January and determined that a “skilled criminal hacker” had accessed its network…

In another challenging year for startups, higher valuations and revenue give reason for hope

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. The aftermath of DeepSeek’s launch was arguably the biggest tech story of the week, especially for anyone keeping a close eye on public markets. But private companies,…

Intel has already received $2.2B in federal grants for chip production

Semiconductor giant Intel Corporation has already received $2.2 billion in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce through the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, the company shared during its Thursday earnings call. Dave Zinsner, Intel’s co-interim CEO, executive vice president and CFO, said the Silicon Valley-based company received the first tranche of $1.1 billion…

Apple tops 1 billion subscriptions, nearly $100 billion in services revenue in 2024

Apple’s iPhone sales may be down, but the company’s Services division, which includes the App Store, iCloud, Music, TV+, and other subscriptions, is still soaring. The Cupertino-based tech giant reported Thursday its Services business had an all-time revenue high of $26.3 billion for the quarter ended December 28, up 14% year-over-year. Services generated nearly $100…

Apple CEO says DeepSeek shows ‘innovation that drives efficiency’

Apple CEO Tim Cook said DeepSeek’s AI models represent “innovation that drives efficiency” on an earnings call on Thursday while fielding questions from analysts about the iPhone maker’s ambitions around AI. “In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing. And, you know, that’s what you see in that model,” said Cook,…

Google quietly announces its next flagship AI model

Google took the low-key route for the launch of its next-gen flagship AI model, Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental. Instead of a splashy announcement, the AI model was revealed in the changelog for the company’s Gemini chatbot app. The launch of Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental — the successor to the Gemini 1.5 Pro model that Google…

Intel won’t bring its Falcon Shores AI chip to market

Intel is effectively killing Falcon Shores, its next-generation GPU for high-performance computing and AI workloads. The move comes as Intel tries to correct course after a number of disappointing product launches and historic losses, while competitors like AMD and Nvidia gain ground. Intel co-CEO Michelle Johnston Holthaus said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday,…

Apple quarterly revenue increases, even as China sales decline 11%

Apple’s latest earnings were a mixed bag filled with slipping iPhone sales and countered by rising revenue. Reporting after the bell Thursday, the iPhone maker’s overall revenue in the first quarter of 2025 beat Wall Street expectations, with a 4% bump to $124.3 billion over the same time last year. Apple reported net income of…

Elon Musk reveals Elon Musk was wrong about Full Self-Driving

For nearly nine years, Elon Musk has promised Tesla vehicles had the hardware needed to support a self-driving car. This week, he made his latest admission that many are not. Musk said on a conference call Wednesday evening that Tesla cars equipped with so-called Hardware 3 will need an upgrade before they can support unsupervised…

OpenAI said to be in talks to raise $40B at a $340B valuation

OpenAI may have billions of dollars in the bank. But it’s gearing up to raise billions more, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Per The WSJ, OpenAI is in talks to secure up to $40 billion in a funding round that would value the startup at $340 billion. SoftBank would lead the…

Fintech startup Cushion shuts down after 8 years and over $20 million in funding

Cushion, a fintech startup that described itself as the “Plaid for buy now, pay later (BNPL),” has shut down. On Thursday, founder and CEO Paul Kesserwani posted on LinkedIn about the decision to wind down the company at the end of 2024. In the post, Kesserwani said that “despite bringing multiple new fintech products to…

Serial founder DIVINE launches creator app with hip hop legend Rakim

Serial entrepreneur and recording artist Victor Lombard, also known as DIVINE, announced this week the launch of a new company, in partnership with Rakim, one of hip-hop’s most influential emcees.  The company is called Notes, a fintech specifically for independent urban musicians and creators. It provides the knowledge and tools to help artists manage their…

Google’s ‘Ask for Me’ feature calls businesses on your behalf to inquire about services, pricing

Google is testing a new “Ask for Me” feature that uses AI to call local businesses on your behalf, for information about availability and pricing. The feature is available on desktop and mobile for users who have opted into the company’s Search Labs experiments. The idea is to help users access information without having to…

Google issues ‘voluntary exit’ program for Android, Chrome, and Pixel employees

Google SVP Rick Osterloh issued an internal memo to the Pixel/Android/Chrome team Thursday, announcing a “voluntary exit program.” TechCrunch has confirmed the letter’s existence with the company, after it was first reported by 9 to 5 Google. In a statement to TechCrunch, a spokesperson notes, The Platforms & Devices team is offering a voluntary exit…

Boom goes supersonic and Elon promises a self-driving service by summer

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! In case you missed it, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would launch a paid ride-hailing service with a fleet of driverless vehicles in Austin in…

US Justice Department says cybercrime forum allegedly affected 17 million Americans

U.S. prosecutors accused an Argentinian national living in Spain of being an “active administrator” of Nulled, one of the two hacking forums seized and shut down by authorities. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

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Factorial Capital takes a fresh approach to finding startups with a technical edge

To make smart bets on the current wave of startups, Matt Hartman thinks venture capitalists will need a deeper understanding of the tech those startups are building. Hartman (pictured above) spent nine years as a partner Betaworks before starting a new firm, Factorial Capital, where he’s developed a different approach to identifying the startups with…

ElevenLabs, the hot AI audio startup, confirms $180M in Series C funding at a $3.3B valuation

ElevenLabs, one of the more popular startups working in the field AI audio, said Thursday that it has raised a Series C round of $180 million, valuing the company at $3.3 billion post-money. a16z and ICONIQ Growth are co-leading investment. Rumors of the fundraise were first reported by TechCrunch. The final numbers confirm some but…

How DeepSeek changed Silicon Valley’s AI landscape

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek provoked the first Silicon Valley freak-out of 2025 after releasing open versions of AI models that compete with the best technology OpenAI, Meta, and Google have to offer. DeepSeek claims to have built its models highly efficiently and quickly, and is providing these models at a fraction of the price American…

Threads adds a ‘media’ tab and the ability to tag people in photos

Meta’s newer social network Threads announced on Thursday that it’s introducing a dedicated “media” tab for both photos and videos, only days after its rivals, including X (formerly Twitter) and the startup Bluesky, did the same for videos. In addition, Meta will also now allow users to tag people in the photos they share. Instagram…

Mark Zuckerberg teases a 2025 return to ‘OG Facebook’

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg teased a “return to OG Facebook” as part of his key goals for 2025 in Wednesday’s Q4 earnings call with investors. While the company was short on details as to what specific changes lay in store, it’s clear that Meta is in desperate need of younger Facebook users to sustain itself…

Data center operator DataBank nets $250M equity investment

The data center market is booming, driven by AI demand. Just last week, OpenAI said that it plans to team up with backers including SoftBank to spend at least $100 billion on data center infrastructure in the U.S. Microsoft aims to put around $80 billion toward AI infrastructure this year, and rival tech giants have…

Ex-Autodesk execs snag $46M to build the next gen of architecture design

Talk to many architects, and they’ll likely tell you that Autodesk’s software, including AutoCAD and Revit, has been indispensable to their work for decades. But despite their widespread use, Autodesk’s former co-CEO and chief product officer Amar Hanspal says that the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry is using 20th century tools to design 21st…

Amazon hikes prices for its Music Unlimited subscriptions

Amazon is the latest company to announce a price hike for its music streaming subscriptions. The company revealed this week that the price of an Amazon Music Unlimited Individual plan for Prime members is going from $9.99 per month to $10.99. As for subscribers without a Prime membership, the price of their subscription is going…

OpenAI will offer its tech to US national labs for nuclear weapons research

OpenAI says it plans to let U.S. National Laboratories, the Department of Energy’s network of R&D labs, use its AI models for nuclear weapons security and other scientific projects. Per CNBC, OpenAI will work with Microsoft, its lead investor, to deploy a model on the supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The model will be a…

Little Umbrella’s next Jackbox-style game pits you and your friends against an AI game show host 

Web-based party games are making a comeback, now with the infusion of generative AI. Among the startups joining the trend, the current forecast looks good for one startup, Little Umbrella, which leverages AI for its social party games.  The company announced on Thursday its $2 million seed funding round. Little Umbrella plans to use the…

Microsoft’s Copilot-focused Surface Pro and Laptop PCs ship with Snapdragon and Intel options

At an event in New York City on Thursday, Microsoft unveiled two additions to the Surface line of PCs. The new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop both arrive with Copilot+ PC certification. Announced in May 2024, the program aims to identify business-focused devices that are designed specifically for the company’s AI platform, Copilot. It’s a…

Mexican president pushes back against Google’s renaming of Gulf of Mexico

Google Maps is planning to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename several American landmarks, including the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. However, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said in a press conference on Wednesday that Mexico will send a letter to Google questioning its choice to update the body of water’s name.…

AI creations edited by humans can likely be copyrighted in US, agency says

In the U.S., AI-generated creations — books, movies, and so forth— that have been edited by a human can likely be copyrighted, but those without any human modifications or additions cannot. That’s according to a report published by the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO) on Wednesday, which outlined scenarios in which AI-generated content might be eligible…

Backline automatically remediates security vulnerabilities

Backline, a new security startup that uses AI agents to automatically remediate security vulnerabilities, is coming out of stealth with a $9 million seed round led by StageOne Ventures. This is the third startup by Maor Goldberg, the company’s co-founder and CEO. He previously co-founded Whitebox Security, which he sold to SailPoint in 2015, as…

QED seeds $9.9M in Cedar Money, a stablecoin payment platform

The newest generation of startups aiming to solve cross-border payments are focusing on stablecoins — cryptocurrency coins often pegged to actual currencies or other commodities to help them keep stable prices — to build solutions that work faster and often cheaper than classic financial rails. This trend is also driving a surge in investor interest…

Savant Labs is an automation platform for business analysts

Savant Labs launched its automation platform for data analysts in 2023. The company, which competes with the likes of Alteryx, on Thursday said it had raised $18.5 million in a Series A round led by Dell Technologies Capital. Unlike some other low-code/no-code tools, Savant’s focus is squarely on business analysts. Analysts, its CEO and founder…

RingCentral Events Launches Studio, Highlights Customer Momentum, and Enhances Experiences with AI

Events platform wins new Fortune 500 customers Studio enables organisers to effortlessly produce professional and branded event streams that amaze audiences New AI Clips capability auto-generates highlights from event recordings, saving customers time and money COMPANY NEWS: RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG), a global leader in AI-powered trusted business communications for companies of all sizes, today…

RingCentral Events Launches Studio, Highlights Customer Momentum, and Enhances Experiences with AI

Events platform wins new Fortune 500 customers Studio enables organisers to effortlessly produce professional and branded event streams that amaze audiences New AI Clips capability auto-generates highlights from event recordings, saving customers time and money COMPANY NEWS: RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE: RNG), a global leader in AI-powered trusted business communications for companies of all sizes, today…